Buying milk in the uk, co op v Lidl.

[jackg]

There’s a co op and a Lidl near me (well within about a 10 mile radius)...

If I buy 4 pints of milk at Lidl, it comes to £1.07 and at the co op it comes to £1.52. The co op is a smaller store so I think the higher prices could be down to that, but, is there anything else that could have encouraged this fairly huge price difference?

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[Pmalek]

Is it the same brand of milk in both stores?

If not the reason can be that larger producers can afford to sell their products at a cheaper price because of the much bigger production. They are profitable due to the big amounts they are able to sell even for a lower price. Their prices are not as high as for companies with a much smaller production rate. If the £1.52 milk you bought belongs to a local company for example that only sells in one city and is not well known all over the country or the rest of Europe they have to sell for a higher price in order to stay profitable.

[aplistir]

Is the milk in Lidl made in germany.
If it is, then you should buy it, because it is better. There is no mad cow disease in germany.

But I guess Lidl just is good at making aggressive deals with the producers, and that is why they are able to have better prices.

I would choose the shop that has cheaper prices.

[jackg]

We work with almost 200 dairy farmers across the country who produce great quality milk.

Animal welfare is a big concern for both you and us. That's why we carry out regular checks on top of Red Tractor standards. We insist that farmers give their cows access to grazing pastures, where possible and in season.

Farmers benefit from being paid a guaranteed premium price for every litre they produce. This is regularly reviewed. They also have their say in our Farming Group and meet throughout the year to share knowledge.

https://food.coop.co.uk/farming-and-fisheries/sustainability/dairy

All our dairy farmer suppliers must meet the Red Tractor farm assurance standards and are regularly inspected. These standards relate to animal husbandry, welfare, cow housing, environmental protection and traceability.

https://www.muller.co.uk/farmers/farm-assurance-standards/

Is what I’ve just found. Meaning the co op is more expensive because they pay a premium.

[Jet Cash]

The co-op is the largest chain of convenience stores ( corner shops ) in the UK. Lidl is a town centre discounter, and they often use sugar and milk as loss leaders.

The co-op started as a farming co-operative, and they owned a large number of farms across the country. Unfortunately they appointed a globalist banker to run their banking division, and he misinvested their funds in toxic debt derivatives. This is a classic ploy of the banking elite, who have so much control in western countries. I think they paid him off with a £3.5 million reward for his services, but the end result was that the co-op had to sell most of its farms to avoid bankruptcy. By having control of their own farms, their food was of a much higher quality. Many of the farm have been bought by European farming organisations, and are now following the lower EU food requirements. The sooner we can regain control of our agricultural quality control, and can return to the higher British standards, the better it will be for the health of the nation.

[paxmao]

Sorry if you already know this, but the competitive strategies of companies are basically three:

- Cost leader
- Quality leader (differentiation).
- Niche services.

LIDL is on the Cost leader side in every country I know of and it is easy to spot it:

- Range of products: Is nearly nonexistent. If you want "orange juice" you have one type. This reduces stocks, complexities and supply chains.
- Level of service: It is almost impossible to make your clients wait more and your employees more miserable.
- Pricing strategy: Almost all products are cheaper than any competitor´s.

The Co-op is not even near that strategy. They are clearly on the differentiation strategy, being some of their brand attributes being "local", being "sustainable", being "responsible", etc... These attributes are particularly appealing to the consumers  in some countries (see JetCash´s post above for reference) and they can compete on that ground even if their average shopping cart is possibly 20 to 30% more expensive than LIDL´s equivalent.

[jackg]

Sorry if you already know this, but the competitive strategies of companies are basically three:

- Cost leader
- Quality leader (differentiation).
- Niche services.

Most of our stores try to take all three. Lidl has an entilre half an aisle devoted to toilet rolls for example (for some reason).

LIDL is on the Cost leader side in every country I know of and it is easy to spot it:
- Range of products: Is nearly nonexistent. If you want "orange juice" you have one type. This reduces stocks, complexities and supply chains.
- Level of service: It is almost impossible to make your clients wait more and your employees more miserable.
- Pricing strategy: Almost all products are cheaper than any competitor´s.

Queues take ages in lidl, workers are morrison's and tesco are usually much faster than the lidl ones (although maybe that's just because thre aren't as many people going through with trollies.

The Co-op is not even near that strategy. They are clearly on the differentiation strategy, being some of their brand attributes being "local", being "sustainable", being "responsible", etc... These attributes are particularly appealing to the consumers  in some countries (see JetCash´s post above for reference) and they can compete on that ground even if their average shopping cart is possibly 20 to 30% more expensive than LIDL´s equivalent.

It seems a bit scammy some of the stuff they do though. Rather than being to the point (which discount chains probably are a bit too much) they say things intentionlaly designed to mislead in order to make people think they're a better choice to go with when sometimes they might not be (e.g, the every effort is made to ensure that the cattle is able to go outside at certain points of the year, why not all the year? Free range milk has a lot more nutrients than the "Red Tractor" battery farming)...

[Jet Cash]

I really don't understand the obsession with Tesco. I can remember when Cohen started the busiess, and shops looked like street vendors stalls. Vegetable boxes were piled high, and the product wasn't removed from the boxes. Prices were low, and quality was good. They seem to have reversed this policy now. Prices are generally higher than other supermarkets and the quality is lower ( in my opinion). Their marketing is deceptive as well in many cases - a 1 kilo bag can cost more than two half kilo bags for some products.

Lidl started well by having low prices, and stocking products for European immigrants. They bought a lot of warehouse clearance stock as well, and sometimes their fruit and veg was not in its prime. They seem to have adopted the Tesco model recently though, and their prices have crept up, and now there are often better deals to be found at Aldi - their competitor. They also seem to be leaning on their suppliers to reduce costs and quality, and there are health warnings appearing for the pineapples for example. I've seen their bread arriving in Hovis cages, and Hovis is the quality brand that slumped when Tesco pushed them into a major supply deal. As a result of the drop in quality, Warburtons managed to win in the battle for the new slot as quality sliced bread supplier.

Morrisons was a north country grocery chain, and they bought the larger Safeways supermarket chain, and this nearly bankrupted them. They managed to survive, and they created a niche for themselves by continuing the old grocer's marketing concepts, and sold a good range of products. Unfortunately, they appointed a new managing director a few years ago, and he decided to "clean up" their product range, so now they are just another supermarket chain trying to compete on price. Their free WiFi doesn't work either.

Asda was born from the old Associated Dairies milk delivery chain ( hence the name ), and has now been bought by Walmart. Whilst there is a measure of local control, I gather that major policy decisions are made in America.

I could go on with a number of other points. For example, the traditional English chain Sainsburys now has the country of Qatar as the majority shareholder, and they are rumoured to be negotiating the purchase of Asda. Amazon are now moving in on a number of supermarket chains with their delivery and marketing services - many people think they were the cause of the failure of Toys'R'Us.

[jackg]

The failure of toys’r’us was shoddy management. They have had issues since at least 2007 which they never thought to rectify.

Morrison’s was a great store forbiying stuff. They usually have really friendly staff if you visit the same one and know people around then it’s likely you’ll meet one on the checkput or something while putting your items through (which is always nice)...

[paxmao]

It seems a bit scammy some of the stuff they do though. Rather than being to the point (which discount chains probably are a bit too much) they say things intentionlaly designed to mislead in order to make people think they're a better choice to go with when sometimes they might not be (e.g, the every effort is made to ensure that the cattle is able to go outside at certain points of the year, why not all the year? Free range milk has a lot more nutrients than the "Red Tractor" battery farming)...

Brits are really good at marketing... as long as is not provably false, you can probably get away with that stuff.

[LTU_btc]

At least in my country Lidl is one of the cheapest stores. And I think one of the msin reasons why products like milk  is cheaper in LIDL because they sell not branded products. In other shops you're paying for a brand. While Lidl not selling products of popular brands, they're just selling milk in one name. But in most cases it's same milk that costs £1.52, but just in different package. I like Lidle because of lower prices, but their disadvantage that they offer very small range of products - one type milk, one type of juices, one type of cola and etc.